* future of sustanability - the world conservation union

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The Future of SustainabilityRe-thinking Environment and Development

in the Twenty-first Century

Report of the IUCN Renowned Thinkers Meeting, 29-31 January 2006

www iucn org

The World Conservation Union

o Credit: NASA Johnson Space Centre (NASA-JSC)



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Last revised 22 May 2006

The Future of Sustainability:Re-thinking Environment and Development in

the Twenty-first Century

W.M. AdamsProfessor of Conservation and Development,Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK

1. Background

IUCN convened a meeting at the end of January 2006, to discuss the issue of

sustainability in the twenty-first century

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. The meeting considered theprogress made towards global sustainability, the opportunities and theconstraints facing the world and the World Conservation Union in attemptingto meet the challenge of sustainability. This paper has been written todevelop further key arguments explored at the meeting, and to provide a basisfor discussion by IUCN Council of next steps in the ‘rethinking sustainability’process2.

2. The Idea of Sustainable Development

At the start of the twenty-first century, the problem of global sustainability is

widely recognised by world leaders, and a common topic of discussion by journalists, scientists, teachers, students and citizens in many parts of theworld. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, 2002)confirmed that the first decade of the new century, at least, would be one ofreflection about the demands placed by humankind on the biosphere.

The idea of sustainability dates back more than 30 years, to the new mandateadopted by IUCN in 19693. It was a key theme of the United NationsConference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 19724. The conceptwas coined explicitly to suggest that it was possible to achieve economicgrowth and industrialization without environmental damage. In the ensuingdecades, mainstream sustainable development thinking was progressively

developed through the World Conservation Strategy (1980)5, the BrundtlandReport (1987)6, and the United Nations Conference on Environment andDevelopment in Rio (1992), as well as in national government planning andwider engagement from business leaders and non-governmentalorganisations of all kinds.

Over these decades, the definition of sustainable development evolved. TheBrundtland Report defined sustainable as ‘development that meets the needsof the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet



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their own needs’6. This definition was vague7, but it cleverly captured twofundamental issues, the problem of the environmental degradation that socommonly accompanies economic growth, and yet the need for such growthto alleviate poverty.

The core of mainstream sustainability thinking has become the idea of three

dimensions, environmental, social and economic sustainability. These havebeen drawn in a variety of ways, as ‘pillars’, as concentric circles, or asinterlocking circles (Figure 1). The IUCN Programme 2005-8, adopted in2005, used the interlocking circles model to demonstrate that the threeobjectives need to be better integrated, with action to redress the balancebetween dimensions of sustainability (Figure 1 c).

Figure 1. Three Visual

Representations of Sustainable

Development: Pillars, Circles,

Interlocking Circles

A. Pillars

http://www.vda.de/en/service/jahresbericht/auto2002/auto+umwelt/u_3.html

B. Concentric ircles

http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/sustainability-intro.htm

C. Overlapping Circles

http://www.iucn.org/programme/

Governments, communities and businesses have all responded to thechallenge of sustainability to some extent.

Almost every national government in the United Nations now has a minister

and a department tasked with policy on the environment, and many regionaland local governments have also developed this capacity. Since 1992 thevolume and quality of environmental legislation (international, national andlocal) has expanded hugely, and international agreements (such as the Kyotoprotocol) have not only raised the profile of environmental change but alsobegun to drive global policy change.

Public awareness of environmental and social issues in development are inmany cases now well developed. Citizens in almost all countries not only



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know the issues, but tend to feel that the quality of the environment isimportant both to their own wellbeing and to the common good.

The ‘greening’ of business has grown to be a central issue in corporate socialresponsibility for many global companies, although for many it is still aboutique concern within wider relationship management, rather than

something that drives structural change in the nature or scale of corebusiness.

There is a profound paradox here. On the one hand, the twenty-first centuryis widely heralded as the era of sustainability, with a rainbow alliance ofgovernment, civil society and business devising novel strategies for increasinghuman welfare within planetary limits. On the other hand, the evidence is thatthe global human enterprise rapidly becoming less sustainable and not more.Much has been achieved - but is it enough? Are global trends towardssustainability or away from it? Have the concepts of sustainability andsustainable development offered a coherent basis for change?

2. Critiques of Sustainable Development

2.1 Is it clear what sustainable developments means?

The phrase sustainable development covers a complex range of ideas andmeanings8. Our Common Future located environmental issues within aneconomic and political frame, moving sustainability to the core of internationaldevelopment debate. Rio emphasised global environmental change, and theproblems of biodiversity and resource depletion and climate change. TheWorld Summit on Sustainable Development returned poverty to the top of theagenda, reflecting the Millennium Development Goals agreed at the UnitedNations Millennium Summit in September 20009. Sustainability was one ofeight Goals, associated with 18 targets and 48 indicators intended to beyardsticks for measuring improvements in people's lives10.

Analysts agree that one reason for the widespread acceptance of the idea ofsustainable development is precisely this looseness. It can be used to coververy divergent ideas11. Environmentalists, governments, economic andpolitical planners and business people use ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainabledevelopment’ to express sometimes very diverse visions of how economy andenvironment should be managed. The Brundtland definition was neat butinexact. The concept is holistic, attractive, elastic but imprecise. The idea of

sustainable development may bring people together but it does notnecessarily help them to agree goals. In implying everything sustainabledevelopment arguably ends up meaning nothing.

2.2 The problem of trade-offs

The conventional understanding of sustainable development, based on the‘three pillars’ model is flawed because it implies that trade-offs can always bemade between environmental, social and economic dimensions of



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sustainability. In response to this, a distinction is often drawn between‘strong’ sustainability (where such trade-offs are not allowed or are restricted)and ‘weak’ sustainability (where they are permissible). The concept of ‘criticalnatural capital’ is also used to describe elements of the biosphere that cannotbe traded off (e.g. critical ecosystems or species). However, in practice,development decisions by governments, businesses and other actors do allow

trade-offs and put greatest emphasis on the economy above other dimensionsof sustainability. This is a major reason why the environment continues to bedegraded and development does not achieve desirable equity goals.

The three ‘pillars’ cannot be treated as if equivalent. First, the economy is aninstitution that emerges from society: these are in many ways the same, theone a mechanism or set of rules created by society to mediate the exchangeof economic goods or value. The environment is different, since it is notcreated by society. Thinking about trade-offs rarely acknowledges this.Second, the environment underpins both society and economy. Theresources available on earth and the solar system effectively present a finitelimit on human activity. Effective limits are often much more specific and

framing, in that the capacity of the biosphere to absorb pollutants, provideresources and services is clearly limited in space and time. In many areas(e.g. warm shallow coastal waters adjacent to industrialised regions) thatcapacity is close to its limits.

2.3 The Problem of Metrics

There is no agreed way of defining the extent to which sustainability is beingachieved in any policy programme. Sustainability and sustainabledevelopment are effectively ethical concepts, expressing desirable outcomesfrom economic and social decisions. The term ‘sustainable’ is thereforeapplied loosely to policies to express this aspiration, or to imply that the policychoice is ‘greener than it might otherwise be (e.g. the idea of a ‘sustainableroad building programme’). Everywhere the rhetoric of sustainabledevelopment is ignored in practical decisions. Often sustainable developmentends up being development as usual, with a brief embarrassed genuflectiontowards the desirability of sustainability. The important matter of principletherefore becomes a victim of the desire to set targets and measure progress.

3. Is There a Problem with the State of the World?

The issue of environmental limits to the human project on earth was brought

to international attention in the early 1970s, particularly by the Club of Rome’sprecocious computer modelling in Limits to Growth 12 . The WorldConservation Strategy, published in 1980, offered the first coherent a analysisof environmental sustainability. It emphasised the need to maintain essentialecological processes and life support systems, to preserve genetic diversity,and to ensure the sustainable utilization of species and ecosystems.



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In 2005, exactly a quarter of a century later, the findings of the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment offered a stark commentary on the state of the earthand the sustainability of humankind’s management (See Box)

The significance and scale of the global human footprint is not in doubt.Consumption of living resources as raw material and sinks for waste materials

is high and growing13

. In 1997, Peter Vitousek and colleagues noted inScience that the rate and scale of change in the biosphere as well as thekinds and combinations of change were fundamentally different from those atany other time in planetary history14. The results of these transformations arealmost universally negative in their impacts on the biosphere. In 1992,Edward Wilson noted that human activities have increased 'background'extinction rates by between 100 and 10,000 times. 'We are’, he said, ‘in themidst of one of the great extinction spasms of geological history'.15

The message is no better on poverty. The Millennium Assessment makesquite clear that not only does the level of poverty remain high, but inequality isgrowing (Box 2).



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Box 1: State of the Biosphere

Status of Regulating and Cultural Services

Regulating Services Status

Air quality regulation declineClimate regulation – global improvement

Climate regulation –regional and local

mixed

Water regulation mixed

Erosion regulation decline

Water purification andwaste treatment

decline

Disease regulation mixed

Pest regulation decline

Pollination decline

Natural hazard regulation decline

Cultural Services

Spiritual and religiousvalues decline

Aesthetic values decline

Recreation and ecotourism mixed

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessmentand sources in numbered end notes

State of the world’s ecosystems

• By 1980, humans estimated toappropriate forty per cent of potential

terrestrial net primary production16.• In 1994, 75 per cent of the habitable

earth estimated to have beendisturbed by human activity17.

• In 2003 the global population of largepredatory fish had been reduced toonly 10% of levels before industrialfishing began18.

Change in ecosystems:

• More land was converted to croplandin the 30 years after 1950 than in the150 years 1700 - 1850

• 20% of the world’s coral reefs werelost and 20% degraded in the lastseveral decades

• Amount of water in reservoirsquadrupled since 1960

• Withdrawals from rivers and lakesdoubled since 196019

Change in biogeochemical cycles:

• Flows of biologically availablenitrogen in terrestrial ecosystemsdoubled since 1960

• Flows of phosphorus tripled

• 50% of all the synthetic nitrogenfertilizer ever used has been usedsince 1985

•

60% of the increase in theatmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750 has taken place since195920

Box 2 Poverty

1.1 billion people survive on less than $1 per day. 70 percent live in rural areas where they arehighly dependent on ecosystem services

Inequality has increased over the past decade. During the 1990s, 21 countries experienceddeclines in their rankings in the Human Development Index

Over 85o million people were undernourished in 2000–02, up 37 million from the period 1997–99

Per capita food production has declined in sub-Saharan Africa Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to improved water supply, and more than 2.6 billion

lack access to improved sanitation Water scarcity affects roughly 1–2 billion people worldwide. Global improvements in levels of poverty are skewed by rapid economic growth in India and

China; poverty elsewhere (especially in sub-Saharan Africa) is profound and persistent

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment



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Problems of environment and development are closely linked; degradation ofecosystem services harms poor people. Half the urban population in Africa,Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean suffers from one or more diseasesassociated with inadequate water and sanitation. The declining state ofcapture fisheries is reducing an inexpensive source of protein in developing

countries. Per capita fish consumption in developing countries, excludingChina, declined between 1985 and 1997. Desertification affects thelivelihoods of millions of people, including a large portion of the poor indrylands

Since the Millennium Summit in 2000 (at which world leaders agreed theMillennium Development Goals), and the World Summit on SustainableDevelopment in 2002, there has been a renewed energy to policy debateabout poverty and environment. The concept of sustainable developmentprecisely embraces this challenge.

Yet despite over three decades of explicit concern about sustainability, a

concern increasingly part of the mainstream of international debate, thehuman claim on nature is increasing almost everywhere unchecked, and theproblem of poverty is deeply persistent. The implications for the poor of thecurrent generation and for future generations is extremely serious.

The velocity of environmental change is fast, and increasing. As PeterVitousek and colleagues comment, tellingly, ‘we are changing the earth morerapidly than we are understanding it’21. Rates of human transformation of theearth are increasing, particularly in countries undergoing rapid industrializationor de-industrialisation.The human capacity to destroy life-support systems (ecosystem services) isnew. Humanity is burning through natural assets and their capacity to supportlife and quality of human life without thought to the future and the rights andneeds of today’s people.

The current relationship between humans and biosphere is novel, outside allhuman historical experience (and therefore learned adaptive responses), andarguably outside the envelope of evolution adaptation of higher mammals.

4. Urgency, Risk and Opportunity

Although the issue of sustainability has been recognised explicitly since the

1970s, there is an acute urgency to the global problematique at the start ofthe twenty first century. However, at the same time the first decade of thiscentury offers a unique opportunity to re-think the dominant patterns of globaldevelopment.

The twentieth century was dominated by debates about ‘development’, how topromote Western models of economic growth, urbanisation andindustrialisation globally. Environmentalist critique of development in the last30 years argued that the conventional development model was unsustainable.



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Several factors now offer a unique window for demonstrating that fact, and forconvening a new discussion about human and environmental futures.

Today, at the start of the twenty first century, some developing countries hadbegun to achieve sustained economic growth and industrialisation on thismodel, first the ‘Asian Tigers’, then China and India. The success of

development on the standard ‘fossil fuel automobile-based throwawayconsumer economy’ in China and India offers a unique opportunity to assessits limitations. China’s success, for example, is bringing massive increases inconsumption (grain, meat, steel oil, timber)22. China’s revolutionary economicgrowth demonstrates the flaws with the conventional growth model. It showsthe need for systemic change in the way development is understood andbrought about globally: in the west as much as elsewhere. The earth is at atipping point: business as usual is no longer an option.

The present global dilemma offers huge risks, but also outstandingopportunities. The need to create a ‘sustainable postfossil-fuel society andeconomy’23 has never been more widely recognised, although the challenges

on the road to achieving it remain breathtaking.

The dominant development model based on the unlimited meeting ofconsumer wants leads inexorably to over-consumption. Yet continuedphysical expansion in the global reach of commodity supply systems meansthat consumers in developed countries continue to perceive resource flows asbountiful, and develop no sense of limits to consumption24. Whether asconsumers or citizens, people in industrialised economies show noawareness that production systems are ecologically flawed or constrained.Yet this model is itself disseminated internationally by global media andadvertising as unproblematic, uniformly good and desirable. Belief in theopportunity to consume without limits in an ecologically limited world is apowerful driving force increasing global risk.

Interestingly, the unsustainability of the present global development model isprobably better understood in China than in the conventional industrialheartlands of Europe and North America. There, politicians fear backlashfrom citizens reacting as consumers to anything that alters their lifestyle inways they perceive as deleterious. This results in demands for low fuelprices, profligate material and energy consumption, and persistent ignoranceof the social and environmental conditions under which global products arecreated. Environmentalist challenges to business as usual remain outside themainstream, and the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption of

the developed world persist.

The global integration of once semi-independent national economies isadvancing rapidly, eroding the capacity of the nation state to balanceeconomic, social and environmental choices

Social and cultural globalization is also rapid, creating both dizzyingopportunities for information and cultural exchange, but also unprecedentedchallenges to the post-second world war institutions of international



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integration and governance. Disabling fears about security, cultural changeand political threat are an issue in many countries.

Human influences on natural patterns of climatic variability undermine thecomfortable assumption dominating the twentieth century that global climatewould persist within known historical bounds. Scientific understanding,

although growing, is still limited. However, it is clear that the ocean-atmosphere envelope demonstrates non-linear dynamics, making relativelyrapid changes in climatic patterns a likely feature of the future earth; humanforcing of the parameters of that change (through the greenhouse effect andother processes) will increase the speed and unpredictability of such changes.Climate change has immediate implications for other phenomena such as sealevel and extreme events. The coastal location of the world’s largest citiesexposes huge numbers of people to potential future risk.

The growth of global human populations brings exciting benefits in terms ofcultural achievements and creativity, and the generation of new ideas.However, the rate of growth of human populations and the rate of growth of

the services needed to meet growing human need present huge challenges.The chronic nature of the poverty into which many children are born presentssignificant and rapidly advancing risks.

Technology also offers opportunities and risks. The novelty of some newtechnologies and the speed of technological innovation and adoption bringsthe potential for unforeseen social, environmental, economic or healthconsequences, (e.g. the adoption of new technologies or novel compounds byuntrained users). Some technologies bring significant political andgovernance challenges (e.g. nuclear fission).

Developments in ecological restoration offer novel and inspiriting opportunitiesto enhance and reinstate biodiversity and ecosystem services, yet humanskills in ecosystem assembly remain limited. For this reason, any argumentfor a strategy of ‘develop now and restore damaged ecosystems later’, basedon extrapolation of the logic of the ‘environmental Kutznets curve’ isfundamentally flawed. ‘Critical natural capital’ cannot be replaced withinrealistic timeframes.

The concurrence of disasters in 2005 and 2006 (numerous hurricanes andtropical storms, earthquakes, flooding, famine) has concentrated the minds ofWestern media pundits on the shared fate of humanity. Some of thesedisasters (especially storminess and flooding) are connected in popular

accounts to issues such as climate change. The parallel nature ofenvironmental and humanitarian issues is thus clear to many people.

There is therefore, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, a powerfulopportunity to start a new debate about development, economy, equity andenvironment. This must address both the human needs and aspirations of thepoor of developing world, and the over-consumption in the industrialisedworld.



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5. A New Challenge

5.1 The Need for a New Approach

Despite the achievements of the last three decades, the present concepts of

sustainability and sustainable development are clearly inadequate to drive thetransitions necessary to adapt human relations with the rest of the biospherefor the future. Something new is needed.

The problem with sustainability and sustainable development is not that theaspirational values they represent are wrong, but that they are over-workedand tired, As currently formulated they are too loose to drive effective changeon the scale required.

The need at the start of the twenty first century is clearly for systemic change.The experience of the last 30 years shows that this cannot be brought aboutusing the metaphors, slogans and ideas that are currently available. The

scale of transformation needed demands new concepts, new ideas, new waysof engaging citizens and opinion leaders in the search for solutions.

However, as an idea sustainability has been, and continues to be, powerful.While the concept is clearly burdened with a great deal of excess weight, andmany potentially conflicting ideas have become attached to it like barnacleson a ship’s hull, it still has considerable power. The concept of sustainabilityis widely recognised and discussed. It has taken a decade and a half’s effortto build the concept into the thinking of local and national governments,business and schools and universities. To use a business analogy,sustainability is an established ‘brand’ that has wide recognition and stillexpresses core values to a wide audience. For a business with anestablished brand that has become tired, abandonment and re-launch of areplacement could bring just huge costs and confusion and lost publicengagement.

Hypothesis 1: That the most effective strategy is to adopt an incremental or evolutionary approach, re-orientating the concept of sustainability, re- emphasising what it means and moving forwards; a strategy of ‘keep it but fix it’.

5.2 Timing

The manifold challenges to the world community first decade of the twenty-first century present a turbulent moment within which to push for a newengagement with the idea of sustainability. However, it also offers a windowof opportunity for the development of a new approach to planetarymanagement.

By 2020 responses to issues like climate change and ‘peak oil’ will be moreobvious, but the room for manoeuvre will be much less. Moreover, the



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political stresses that result for these challenges will not necessarily beconducive to calm collaborative action. Change, particularly significantchange, in ‘business as usual, needs time, but the environment is thetimekeeper. Human misuse of environmental assets is driving environmentalchange, and this demands action now.

Hypothesis 2: That the timing is right to develop a new strategic approach to global sustainability

5.3 The Role of The World Conservation Union -IUCN IUCN has a unique constitution (incorporating government and non-governmental organisations) and unique convening power. IUCN therefore istherefore in a position to start to broker new forms of coalition, alliances andsee if we can create innovation. If IUCN’s membership can be mobilised,then it could provide the basis for a catalytic effect on current debate. IUCNcan do little alone, but it can empower and mobilise others.

Hypothesis 3: That IUCN should take a lead in developing new thinking about sustainability

6. New Concepts, New Thinking

6.1 Sustainability and Resilience

The uncomfortable bottom line of sustainability is the insight that thebiosphere is limited. In its crude form, the idea of ‘limits to growth’ dominated1970s environmentalism. Evidence of resource substitution (fibre optics forcopper cables, light plastics for steel) and improved resource use

technologies (e.g. improved technologies for the discovery and exploitation ofoil reserves) have allowed this view to be pilloried as unrealistic ‘flat-earthism’.On the other hand, the spread of persistent organic pollutants, the ozone holeand the growing certainly of anthropogenic climate change caused by CO2and other greenhouse gases demonstrate that the fundamental point isperfectly valid. The earth’s capacity to yield products for human consumption,to absorb or sequestrate human wastes (especially novel compounds), and toyield ecosystem services are all of them limited. The idea that that there isalways somewhere to absorb externalities is flawed, and it is a myth ofprogress that living systems will always recover from human demands.

Moreover, as environmental capacity is reached, institutions for sharing theearth are placed under intolerable strain.

The science of resilience is central to an understanding of the planetaryfuture, and the metaphor of resilience (and its limits) is valuable for itscontribution to more general debate. For decades, message taken from thescience of ecology by society more generally was that ecosystems werehomeostatic – that once a stress was removed, they would bounce back totheir former state. This comforting metaphor implied that there was no reason



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to fear that human misuse of the global environment would lead toirretrievable breakdown. The bleak message of the Gaia hypothesis, that thebiosphere could be understood as a self-regulating system, was reinterpretedwith shocking anthropocentric complacency to imply that it would thereforealways support human life. The earth may function to maintain life, but notnecessarily life in the stunning biodiversity we know today, and certainly not

human life.

Ecology has moved on. Non-linear dynamics are accepted as an inherentelement in ecosystem function. Polluted lakes do not necessarily return totheir former state when pollution stops; climate can not be expected to varyaround some mean approximating to the conditions of the last 30 years; it ishighly likely that extinction of certain species will change the amplitude andfrequency of ecosystem change in ways that constrain human opportunities;novel compounds and broad-taxon genetic manipulation may well generateshifts in ecosystem form and function.

The biosphere is not infinite. As Edward Wilson observes, ‘the biosphere, all

organisms combined, makes up only one part in ten billion of the earth'smass. It is sparsely distributed through a kilometre-thick layer of soil, waterand air stretched over a half billion square kilometres of the surface'25.

The capacity of nature to meet human needs depends on both its internaldynamics and its dynamic responses to human stresses. The resilience ofthe biosphere is critical to the sustainability of human enterprise on earth. 6.2. Sustainability and Human wellbeing

The diversity of life is fundamental to human wellbeing26. The concept ofnature has great strength, because it combines both a conventionalconservation concern for species and ecosystems (biodiversity) and thediverse ways in which species and ecosystems have value (aesthetic, culturaland spiritual values as well as more directly material values, and theMillennium Ecological Assessment recognised).

Under the conventional development model, the ‘good life’ is defined innarrow economistic terms, in terms of access to good and services. Thisformulation is inadequate. Just as Amartya Sen’s concept of ‘development asfreedom’ (the expansion of the real freedoms that people enjoy) transformsunderstanding of attempts to achieve development, so too there is a need toconcentrate not on the means to achieve sustainability, but on ends 27.

Sustainability needs to be made the basis of a new understanding of humanaspiration and achievement. The relevant metric of sustainability is ‘theproduction of human wellbeing (not necessarily material goods) per unit ofextraction from or imposition upon nature’28.

A key element here is the linkage between human wellbeing and security.The quality, diversity and functions of the environment underpin humanhealth, solidarity and security. This is not currently central to thinking about



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social and economic development choices, which separate political andeconomic risk into the mainstream of debate, and sidelines environmentalquality and risk wither to the arena of scientific disagreement or somesecondary concern about ‘quality of life’. Material consumption and politicalsecurity are therefore treated as if they were separate from, more importantthan, issues of quality of life.

In fact, security between people depends fundamentally on issues of equity,within and between generations. David Orr suggests the principle that ‘nohuman being has the right to diminish the life and well-being of another andno generation has the right to inflict harm on generations to come’29. Securityand wellbeing are both rooted in issues of justice at global scale.Sustainability is the path that allows humanity as a whole to maintain andextend quality of life through diversity of life.

The importance of future generations are a central core concept ofsustainability. Intra-generational equity (meeting human needs now) needs tobe directly linked to the fulfilment of basic needs of all global citizens in the

future (inter-generational equity). At present we lack political mechanisms toachieve the former, and we allow development only loosely tied to this goal toundermine capacity to achieve the latter

Justice is of fundamental importance to the planetary future: equity in theenjoyment of the benefits from the use of the earth’s resources between andwithin generations.

6.3 A New Economy

The market is a human institution of unique power and efficiency. It iscapable of driving massive changes in environment and human opportunity ona scale and at a speed that dwarfs the regulatory powers of citizen, state orglobal organisation. Human aspirations, and subsistence, are inextricablylinked to the performance of that economy. The twentieth century was thefirst where the state of the environment became an issue for legislators.Environmentalists have long argued for tighter regulation of markets, but haveonly recently shown much sophistication in imaging how to engage the powerof markets to secure environmental services and biological diversity. This willbe vital if we are to map a transition pathway to low-carbon economy thatworks for both industrialised and non-industrialised economies, for rich andpoor countries and for rich and poor within those countries.

We need to devise metrics to make the economy ‘tell the economic truth’,especially about the externalities of industrial, economic and social processes.This needs new metrics, arising from a new consensus about aims andmeans and new debates about human goals.

The market is central to the way the world works, but sustainability needs tobe understood as a fundamental cultural idea: we need to plant a culture ofsustainability. The planetary future depends on what kind of culture ofconsumerism we build. We need to redesign and engineer the global



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economy so that people can get more yet consume less. One aspect of thisis an economy of services rather than objects, that generates value withoutgenerating waste or unnecessary physical or energetic throughput.

To deal with inequity between rich and poor within a finite world, we need todevise processes that allow gear-down in industrialised economies (in terms

of energy and material throughput) as well as necessary gear-up in lessindustrialised economies.

6.4 Presenting New Thinking:

The existing language of sustainability has become a prison for theimagination. It limits the capacity of partners to respond to the challenge ofplanetary future (e.g. language of choices, trade-offs). The elements neededfor the future are easily stated, although very challenging to work through.They include imagination, vision, passion and emotion.

The issue of emotion is probably central to success. Existing approaches to

sustainability have depended heavily on natural science (from which theconcept came), and economics. ‘Dismal science’ in all forms remainsessential to charting a course to the future, but it is not enough to drivechanges needed. The world is not run by technocrats (even economists), butpoliticians and the citizens they represent or govern. In the past sustainabilityhas engaged the mind, but the future demands an engagement with thehearts as well.

7. Managing Change

7.1 Beyond the usual

The solution to unsustainable planetary management demands a movebeyond both ‘business as usual’ and ‘politics as usual’. There is nothing usualabout the situation humankind is in: nobody has ever been here before.

The search for sustainability can be understood as a social trajectory, achoice of paths. This choice has to be offered in terms of a framework ofchoices. The challenge is to rationalise and reconcile the contradictoryachievements of human progress, and provide choices that allow people toseparate ends (happiness, freedom, fulfilment, a diversity of options) andmeans (jobs, income, wealth, possessions, consumption, power).

The language of ‘environmental limits’ is in many ways a political non-starter.However, it is also central to the challenge of sustainability. Failure tounderstand and live within limits is the main reason why current patterns ofdevelopment are not sustainable.

A core challenge therefore is how to ‘sell’ structural change against theimmediate short-term interests of non-destitute citizens, businesses lockedinto current markets, financial institutions that believe they have no role



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beyond maintaining shareholder value, and timid politicians. The policyconservatism and self-interest of wealthy consumers and citizens, thedeadening effects of ‘affluenza’, and of narrow self-interest of the solvent, arekey constraints on novel structural change. The parish pump political rhetoricthat ‘we will not negotiate our way of life’ is an understandable position forwealthy countries to take, but it is a deeply negative in its implications. Those

with a vested interest oppose change more strongly than those with a visionfor change.

The solution to the dilemma of creating change which the rich and powerfulmistrust has to be in terms of presenting opportunities and not threats.Consumption has to be made be a driver of positive change, not a driver ofglobal degradation. The language of future possibilities is likely to be moreeffective than the language of risk. Environmentalism’s traditional capacity tospeak like the prophet Jeremiah, promising hell to come, does not promotecreative thinking and openness to change. The path-dependence ofenvironmentalist rhetoric in the twentieth century has become disfunctional.

Technology is critical to the transition from the ‘old economy (fossil fuel,automobile throw-away) to the new economy (reuse, recycle, new energy)30.New technologies may be the key to substantial improvements in material andenergy intensity. They may also pose risks to health, welfare andenvironment. New institutions may be needed to manage transitions to newtechnologies.

We are on the cusp of non-media mass communication (citizen-to-citizenlearning, using the web). This has implications for the way information isstored and exchanged (search engines versus libraries), how informationbecomes knowledge and how opinion gains authority. These offer bothopportunities and risks to the formulation and dissemination of new paradigmsfor imaging the planetary future.

7.2 Alliances for change

To have credibility and success, environmentalists need to move beyond thecomfort zone of their established professional rituals and partnerships. Thechanges needed cannot be brought about by environmentalists alone, letalone by IUCN. It will require numerous alliances with a diverse range ofactors, big and small, including businesses, governments, development andenvironmental-developmental organisations and other civil societyorganisations such as religious groups. Capacity building will be critical to the

ability of some partners to support and bring about change.



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Businesses are an important part of the solution. A key dimension of anapproach offering choices must be the effective combination of enterprise,market and regulation. The market is hugely powerful as a force, for good orbad. It is highly efficient, but needs regulation if it is to ‘tell the ecologicaltruth’. Taxation (with taxes restructured to reflect indirect costs of resourceuse, for example carbon throughput) is necessary if creative structural change

is to be brought about. Relevant businesses are not necessarily large

Conservation and environmentalism in the past have placed excessiveemphasis on government and regulation: but why try to drive or coercechange by regulation if you can use the market to change behaviour? As theGrameen businesses demonstrate, social enterprise can be a powerful; forcefor positive change, far outstripping the capacity of government because of itscapacity to harness individual human enterprise and self-interest. Such viral,bottom-of-pyramid solutions to sustainability challenges are in their infancy.

Businesses cannot bring about the needed changes alone. They needgovernments to regulate, and financiers to reward moves towards

sustainability. Ultimately, citizens need to provide the driving forces for neweconomies through their decisions as consumers. Their ability to balancelong term human interests as citizens, parents and neighbours in makingshort-term consumer choices will have a significant impact on the feasibility ofa transition to a new sustainable global economy.

It is unlikely that an attempt to draw up a holistic ‘plan for the future’ will beeffective. The economic, cultural and political changes needed are toocomplex to map out in detail. A more effective strategy would be based onevolving braided channels of change that different actors can own and driveforwards.

Different strategies will be needed in different contexts: no holistic ‘one sizefits all’ plan will be effective. Los Angeles and Liberia are different places,with different challenges.

7.3 Vision and Expectations

The challenges ahead demand vision and boldness. Popular support for thecomplex and difficult transitions ahead demand popular support. This will onlybe realised if ideas connect with heart and emotion. The choices ahead areessentially political, and engagement in debate must centre on centralquestions of ethics.

At the same time, proposal must be realistic. Win-win solutions are rare. Weneed to understand how to make trade-offs between goals (between theinterests of different people, between different environmental outcomes)better.

The next six decades are crucial. Sixty years is three human generations.Young people can imagine their grandchildren. What world will today’steenagers see their children and grandchildren try to live in?



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NOTES

1 ‘The Future of Environmentalism: Re-thinking sustainability for the twenty-firstcentury’ 29-31 January, Hotel Uto Kulm in Zurich, attended by 20 people, including

the President and Director General. It was facilitated by Angela Cropper, andattended by William M. Adams, Rubens Harry Born, Lester R. Brown, Sylvia Earle,,Javed Jabbar, Bill Jackson, Sally Jeanrenaud, David Kaimowitz, Ashok Khosla, LuZhi, Gabriel Lopez, Christine Milne, Mark Moody-Stuart, Valli Moosa, ManfredNiekisch, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Achim Steiner, Alexei Yablokov, MuhammadYunus. This meeting was part of a process begun by a decision of the 63rd Meetingof the World Conservation Union Council (14-16 February 2005), which called uponthe Director General to ‘develop a statement of Council which would capture theconceptualization of conservation as it stands today’. This statement was intended‘to reflect the key conclusions from the 3rd IUCN World Conservation Congress,which sought to link the human and environmental agendas more effectively, and setout the direction for the future evolution of conservation. In addition, the value ofecosystems should be explored as a key concept. It could serve as a clarion call to

the Union’s members and Commissions, to the environmental movement as a wholeand society at large’.

2 This paper has been drafted by W.M. Adams, University of Cambridge, DowningPlace, Cambridge CB2 3EN, email: [email protected]. It draws directly on theinsights and suggestions of all those at the Uto Kulm meeting, but does notnecessarily reflect their views.

3 The new IUCN mandate in 1969 spoke of ‘the perpetuation and enhancement ofthe living world – man’s natural environment – and the natural resources on which allliving things depend’, which referred to management of ‘air, water, soils, mineralsand living species including man, so as to achieve the highest sustainable quality oflife’

4 McCormick, J.S. (The Global Environmental Movement: reclaiming Paradise ,(London: Belhaven, 1992).

5 IUCN, The World Conservation Strategy , (Geneva: International Union forConservation of Nature and Natural Resources, United Nations EnvironmentProgramme, World Wildlife Fund, 1980). WWF is now the Worldwide Fund forNature, IUCN now the World Conservation Union - IUCN.

6 B Brundtland, H. Our Common Future , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, for theWorld Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), (p. 43).

7 S.M. Lélé, “Sustainable development: a critical review,” World Development 19(1991): 607-621.

8 S.M. Lélé, (1991) ‘Sustainable development: a critical review’, World Development

19: 607-621.9 A.L. Mabogunje, (2002) ‘Poverty and environmental degradation: challenges withinthe global economy’, Environment 44 (1): 10-18.

10 www.developmentgoals.org/

11 W.M. Adams, Green Development: environment and sustainability in the Third World (London: Routledge, 2001).

12 Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Behrens, W.W. (1972) The Limits to Growth .,Universe Books, New York.



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13 Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W. (1996) Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth

14 Vitousek P M , Mooney H A, Lubchenco J, Melillo J M (1997) ‘Human dominationof Earth’s ecosystems’, Science 277 (25 July): 494–499.

15 Edward Wilson (1992) The Diversity of Life , Harvard University Press.

16 Vitousek P M, Ehrlich P R, Ehrlich A H and Matson P A (1986) ‘Humanappropriation of the products of photosynthesis’, BioScience 36: 368–373

17 Hannah, L et al , (1994) ‘A preliminary inventory of human disturbance of worldecosystems’, Ambio 23: 246–250.

18 Myers, R., and Worm, B. 2003, 'Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fishcommunities', Nature , vol. 423, pp. 280-283.

19 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

20 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

21 Vitousek P M , Mooney H A, Lubchenco J, Melillo J M (1997) ‘Human dominationof Earth’s ecosystems’, Science 277 (25 July): 494–499

22 Lester R. Brown (2006) Plan B. 2.0: rescuing a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble , W.W. Norton, New York, for the Earth Policy Institute.

23 Paelke, R. (2005) ‘Sustainability as a bridging concept’, Conservation Biology 19:36-8.

24 Newton, J.L. and Freyfogle, E.T. (2004) ‘Sustainability: a dissent’, Conservation Biology 19: 23-32.

25 Edward Wilson (1992) The Diversity of Life , Harvard University Press, p. 33.

26 Environmental health and human wellbeing are core concepts in the IUCNProgramme 2005-8.

27 Sen, A. (2001) Development as Freedom , Oxford University Press.

28 Paehlke, R. (2005) ‘Sustainability as a bridging concept’, Conservation Biology 19:36-8, p. 36.

29 Orr, D. (2006) ‘Framing sustainability’, Conservation Biology 20: 265-6, p. 266.

30 Lester R. Brown (2006) Plan B. 2.0: rescuing a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble , W.W. Norton, New York, for the Earth Policy Institute.

* future of sustanability - the world conservation union

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